The course ended Friday evening with a rather intense stage show event. To demonstrate all of the hypnosis techniques pulled together, Dr. James and an associate, one Christopher Howard, did a group induction (meaning that the class was hypnotized as a group). Being the contrarian I am, I didn't follow their directions and instead watched the whole thing intently rather than allow myself to go into the hypnotic state.

Denise, on the other hand, got deeply involved. In fact, she got so involved that by the end of the event, she was the star of the show. They managed to invoke full-body catalepsy (meaning that her entire body was stiff as a board) and suspend her between two chairs. It was wild. The energy in the room given off by the two leaders, working together, was something I'll not soon forget.

Wrapping it up
So now we're back home and I've had some time to reflect on the experience. I consider it a valuable investment. Already, we've seen some benefit. Two of my employees asked to be hypnotized, one for sales call aversion (to get over being reluctant to make sales calls) and one for stress management just before a journal's due to go to press. Both report substantial improvements in their abilities to do their jobs.

I've also begun practicing the rapport building skills. For me, the biggest gain has been the benefit of being much more aware of what's going on in the head of someone I'm talking to, something I never even paid attention to before the class. I'm convinced the NLP techniques I learned will make me a better manager and a better sales person for the company.

Denise is also convinced, and I'm hopeful, that some of the Time Line Therapy techniques can help release some of the pain we've been feeling, some of the intense stress of rough economic times in the aftermath of September 11. I'm still not deriving those benefits, but if it helps even one of us manage more effectively, I'm sold.

And that's the thing. We needed to find new tools to help us deal with this brave new world. We spent one week away, in paradise (OK, so actually it was in a rather dank hotel in a humid city and I ate in a greasy spoon all week, but hey, there were palm trees, and I did discover papaya and lemon which is delicious.), and we learned a series of new tools that we can apply each day at work. I consider this a good return on investment and I'd recommend it to anyone who's willing to stretch his or her mind.

The Palm part of the article
Since this is PalmPower, I figured I'd best talk about some Palm aspect of this review. We're running this article because we think it's valuable, and we learned some powerful stuff. But I also managed to live off of and run my business via my Palm VIIx during the week. I was able to log in and check my mail, keeping the office running despite a six-hour time difference, and also keep up with current events.

I found that I was quite able to leave my laptop home and rely on my Palm VIIx for a full week of traveling, something I hadn't been brave enough to try before. I recommend it. The Palm VIIx acquitted itself quite well. Oh, and during the few parts of the class that bored me, I was able to surf the Web and still look like I was paying attention. Now, there's real value!